5 Feb 2010

Vaccine, the popular one

The swine flu vaccine is really unpopular in Italy. According to the Ministry of Health, at the end of January just 851,549 people were vaccinated. Most of them had one single dose, while 47,013 people got two doses. The Ministry has an huge surplus of vaccine, that nobody knows how to use. As a matter of fact, only a small amount of the 1,047,421 available doses has been given. The data of the previous vaccinatation campaign, against a 'common' flu virus, is much higher. In the 2008-2009 campaign the 19.1% of the population got the shot, almost 11,5 millions of people. Anyway, in that case the elderly were also offered, after many years of targeted public communication. In the swine flu campaign instead only old people with other medical conditions were included, and only in the last phase of the campaign. Moreover, this has been the first time that healthy young people, aged 18-27, have been offered the flu vaccine.